This invention is related generally to the coating of substrate articles by sputtering, and more particularly, to improved structural features of a rotating cylindrical magnetron used for such coating operations.
The coating of large area substrates, such as architectural glass, automobile windshields and the like, has been accomplished for some time by a sputtering process that includes the use of a planar magnetron. Such coatings include multilayer solar control coatings that are widely used on commercial building windows. Because of the large surface area of the glass to be coated, the coating machinery is in a very large scale.
More recently, a rotating cylindrical magnetron has been suggested for this purpose. But the requirements to rotate a cylindrical sputtering target in a high vacuum, with water cooling, and a stationary magnetic field have not been satisfied in a way that allows such large scale devices to be built and efficiently operated.
Therefore, it is a primary object of the present invention to provide an improved rotating cylindrical magnetron structure that is capable of prolonged large-scale industrial sputtering applications.
It is also an object of the present invention to provide an improved rotating cylindrical magnetron structure for use in efficiently sputtering films on small objects as well.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a rotating cylindrical magnetron structure especially adapted for sputtering dielectric films.